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And fee! thy very Gazetteers give o'er,
Ev'n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more.
What then remains! Ourself. Still, ftill remain
Cibberian forehead †, and Cibberian brain.
This brazen brightness, to the 'Squire fo dear;
This polifh'd hardness, that reflects the peer:
This arch abfurd, that wit and fool delights;
This mefs, tofs'd up of Hockley-hole and White's;
Where dukes and butchers join to wreathe my crown,
At once the bear and fiddle of the town.

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O born in fin, and forth in folly brought! Works damn'd, or to be damn'd! (your father's fault) Go, purify'd by flames afcend the fky,

My better and more chriftian progeny § !

Unftain'd, untouch'd, and yet in maiden fheets;
While all your smutty fifters walk the streets.
Ye fhall not beg, like gratis-given Bland ||,
Sent with a pass, and vagrant thro' the land;

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Nor

* A band of minifterial writers, hired at the price mentioned in the note on book ii. ver. 316, who, on the very day their patron quitted his post, laid down their paper, and declared they would never more meddle in po litics.

So indeed all the MSS. read, but I make no fcruple to pronounce them all wrong, the Laureate being elsewhere celebrated by our poet for his great modefty-modest Cibber-Read, therefore, at my peril, Cerberian forebead. This is perfectly claffical, and, what is more, Homerical; the dog was the ancient, as the bitch is the modern, fymbol of Impudence: (Kuvo`s oμμar' ex** fays Achilles to Agamemnon) which, when in a fuperlative degree, may well be denominated from Cerberus, the dog with three beads.-But as to the latter part of this verse, Cibberian brain, that is certainly the genuine reading. BENTL.

This is a tender and paffionate apoftrophe to his own works, which he is going to facrifice agreeable to the nature of man in great affliction; and reflecting like a parent on the many miferable fates to which they would otherwife be fubject.

$ "It may be obfervable, that my mufe and my fpoufe were equally prolific; that the one was feldom the mother of a child, but in the fame year the other made me the father of a play. I think we had a dozen of each fort between us; of both which kinds fome died in their infancy," etc. Life of C C. p. 217, 8vo. edit.

It was a practice fo to give the Daily Gazetteer and ministerial pamphlets

AMA

Nor fail with Ward *, to Ape-and-monkey climes,

Where vile Mundungus trucks for viler rhymes;

Not fulphur-tipt, emblaze an ale-house fire;
Not wrap up oranges, to pelt your fire!
O! pafs more innocent, in infant ftate,
To the mild limbo of our father Tate:
Or peaceably forgot, at once be blest
In Shadwell's + bofom with eternal reft!
Soon to that mafs of nonfenfe to return,

Where things destroy'd are swept to things unborn.
With that, a tear (portentous fign of grace)
Stole from the mafter of the fev'nfold face:
And thrice he lifted high the birth-day brand,
And thrice he dropt it from his quiv'ring hand;
Then lights the ftructure, with averted eyes:
The rolling fmokes involve the facrifice.
The op'ning clouds difclofe each work by turns,
Now flames the Cid &, and now Perolla burns ;
VOL. II.

C c

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Great

phlets (in which this B. was a writer) and to fend them Post-free to all the towns in the kingdom.

«Edward Ward, a very voluminous poet in Hudibraftic verse, but best known by the London Spy, in profe. He has of late years kept a pub"lic houfe in the city, (but in a genteel way) and with his wit, humour, "and good liquor (ale) afforded his guefts a pleasurable entertainment, efpecially thofe of the high-church party." JACOB, Lives of Poets vol. ii. p. 225. Great numbers of his works were yearly fold into the plantations. -Ward, in a book called Apollo's Maggot, declared this account to be a great fallity, protesting that his public houfe was not in the city, but in Moorfields.

Two of his predeceffors in the laurel.

It is to be obferved that our poet hath made his hero, in imitation of Virgil's, obnoxious to the tender paífions. He was indeed to given to weeping, that he tells us, when Goodman the player fwore, if he did not make a good a&or, be'd be damn'd ; “ the furprife of being commended by one, who

had been himself fo eminent on the stage, and in fe pafitive a manner, was more than he could fupport. In a word ((ays he) it almost took away my "breath, and (laugh if you please) fairly drew tears from my eyes." P. 149, of his Life, octavo.

In the first notes on the Dunciad, it was faid, that this author was particularly excellent at tragedy. This (ays he) is as unjuft as to fay I “could dance on a rope." But certain it is that he had attempted to dance

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Great Cæfar roars, and hiffes in the fires;
King John in filence modeftly expires:
No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims,
Moliere's old stubble * in a moment flames.
Tears gufh'd again, as from pale Priam's eyes,
When the laft blaze fent Ilion to the fkies +.
Rouz'd by the light, old Dulness heav'd the head,
Then fnatch'd a fheet of Thulè from her bed;

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Sudden

on this rope, and fell moft fhamefully, having produced no less than four tragedies (the names of which the poet preserves in these few lines) the three first of them were fairly printed, acted, and damned; the fourth fuppreffed in fear of the like treatment.

* A Comedy threshed out of Moliere's Tartuffe, and fo much the tranflator's favourite, that he affures us all our author's dislike to it could only arife from difaffection to the government 2

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Qui meprife Cotin, n'eftime point fon roi, "Et n'a felon Cotin, ni Dieu, ni foi, ni lei. He affures

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us,

Boil.

that "when he had the honour to kits his Majefty's hand upon prefenting his dedication of it, he was graciously pleafed, out of his "royal bounty, to order him two hundred pounds for it. And this he "doubts not grieved Mr. P."

See Virgil, En. ii. where I would advise the reader to peruse the story of Troy's deftruction, rather than in Wynkyn. But I caution him alike in both to beware of a molt grievous error, that of thinking it was brought about by I know not what Trojan borfe; there having never been any fuch thing. For, first, it was not Trojan, being made by the Greeks; and, fecondly, it was not a borse, but a mare. This is clear from many verfes in Virgil:

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Uteroque recuffo,

Atque utero fonitum quater arma dedere.

Nay, is it not exprefly faid

"Scandit fatalis machina muros

"Fæta armis

How is it poffible the word fata can agree with a horse? And indeed can it be conceived that the chafte and virgin goddess Pallas would employ herself in forming and fashioning the male of that fpecies? But this fhall be proved to a demonstration in our Virgil Restored. SCRIBL.

An unfinished poem of that name, of which one sheet was printed many years ago, by Ambrofe Philips, a northern author. It is an ufual method

of

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Her ample presence fills up all the Space

Dunciad Book I.

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